Let's start with pot legalization. This week I watched a story by Fox News saying that driving while stoned is worse than alcohol and used test subjects to prove their point. Unbeknown to them however, one of the participants secretly filmed the whole thing himself and discovered the test was rigged to fail. They were being tested on a big rig simulator and did a Kobiyashi Maru on the whole thing when one was hit by a car while the light was still green. The levels they want cops to test for, 4 nanometers, is so low, people who smoke regularly will test that every time, high or not, as THC remains in your system for up to a month after smoking weed. The whole story was a fake piece on nonsense that ignored studies from our own government where, after twenty years of research, the conclusion was that marijuana had little effect on driving skills. There is a Dutch study of the same time length that found stoned drivers actually drive better than sober ones, as stoned drivers tend to drive more carefully and slower. Yet these facts never see the light of day with out bought and paid for media and a government still hell bent on dragging the drug war out for another hundreds years.
In Denver, the DEA is furious with pot legalization as it derives them of a critical piece of asset forfeiture, and thus making the DEA less profitable. If I were president the first thing I would do would be eliminate the DEA completely, burn the building to the ground and salt the Earth so nothing could there again. I HATE the DEA. I have had terrible associations with these assholes and have never met one I didn't loathe on sight. They have a tendency to be short sighted, Nazis with a chip on their shoulder and an IQ of a coffee table. A guy I knew lived next door to one of these psychopaths who hounded him to such an extent he got a restraining order against him. The fact this didn't preclude him from owning guns is shocking and luckily nothing horrific happened, but if it had, I would have been the least bit surprised.
This is a quote from one of these idiots: "There’s plenty of evidence that this a harmful thing for kids. I can’t even believe I have to say that,” Sgt. Jim Gerhardt with the North Metro Drug Task Force told CBS4. “We’ve seen children infant age that have been getting into this stuff and hospitalized, and this has been under medical marijuana. I can’t imagine how bad it’s going to get with full blown legalization."
Gerhardt said "now that the drug is legal for adults in the state there will be more and more cases like that, or of children finding their parents pot supply and getting sick or in trouble."
“All the problems we’ve already had have exploded, and I think they are going to get worse,” he said
Nevermind the fact that this happens every day with kids, cigarettes and liquor which makes is a parental problem, not a drug one. This article goes on to state that marijuana addiction is the most common addiction they see, according to Angela Bornemann of a treatment center called Arapahoe House. What she conveniently leaves out is that every one of these kids in treatment is there due to court ordered mandates and not the parents or teen checking him on his own. Therefore, the idea that pot is addictive is a court fantasy and one not based in reality as NO study ever, anywhere says pot is addictive.
Here's his "explosion" of pot cases:
A teenage girl at Air Academy High School in Colorado Springs was hospitalized after eating a pot brownie a 14-year-old boy gave her. The suspect now faces a felony drug charge.
The University of Colorado in Boulder expelled a student who along with another student gave their classmates and a professor pot brownies, sending three to the hospital.
Since when are two cases an explosion? And who goes to the hospital for being high on weed? Unless pot has magically become like heroin since I last looked, a hospital visit sound extreme.
Obamacare is back in the news again as Blue Cross/Blue Shield is looking at a 20% increase in CA. Aetna's CEO is also warning about a doubling of prices due to Obamacare. What neither is realizing is that pricing DOES matter and very soon, nobody will have insurance, and their companies will go the way of the dodo as others figure how to make it affordable. This is capitalism in action. Either some companies will make less profit and pay their executives a lot less (while still being a lot of money, mind you) and clean up in the free market, while more expensive plans die out or the entire system crashes and health care is radically restructured. Either way, companies like Aetna will cease to be, and as health care HAS to continue, the alternative may be the death blow for the greedy, out of control insurance industry.
Is Obamacare perfect? Hardly. In this state BC/BS would be prevented from raising rates too much as the state has the ability to deny excessive rate increases. The result is that MA has the lowest rate increases in the country. Yes, there was an initial huge increase to help cover all the people that previously weren't covered, but since then the hikes have been low single digits per month. And when companies ask for more, the state has the right to say no, this is as high at it will go. Obamacare has no such provision, a terrible oversight along with the no public option both of which need to rectified immediately or else Obamacare will flame out as rates and taxes go up huge on people who can't afford it. The thing needs to be tweaked, not eliminated, and if the GOP doesn't get their heads out of their ass and realize this is a big deal, many an insurance company is going to go under in the next five years.
Right to work laws need to go as well. These laws are indeed creating jobs but they pay squat. Let's take a look at some jobs in the country and compare what the average workers makes versus the CEO.
11. DUNKIN' BRANDS
CEO Nigel Travis' total compensation: $2.0 million
Crew member: $7.83 an hour
How long a crew member would have to work to make CEO annual pay: 250,000 hours or 120 years
10. PAPA JOHN'S
CEO John Schnatter's total compensation: $2.7 million.
Average delivery driver salary: $7.19 an hour.
How long a crew member would have to work to make CEO annual pay: 382,000 hours or 184 years.
9. DOLLAR GENERAL
CEO Richard Dreiling's total compensation: $3,832,000.
Average sales associate salary: $7.62 an hour.
How long a crew member would have to work to make CEO annual pay: 503,000 hours or 242 years.
8. BEST BUY
CEO Brian Dunn's total compensation: $7.1 million.
Average sales associate salary: $9.73 an hour.
How long a crew member would have to work to make CEO annual pay: 730,000 hours or 350 years.
7. HOME DEPOT
CEO Francis Blake's total compensation: $10.8 million.
Average sales associate salary: $11.47.
How long a crew member would have to work to make CEO annual pay: 941,000 hours or 452 years.
6. MCDONALD'S
CEO James Skinner's total compensation: $8.8 million.
Average crew member salary: $7.65 an hour.
How long a crew member would have to work to make CEO annual pay: 1.1 million hours or 550 years.
5. CVS CAREMARK CORPORATION
CEO Larry Merlo's: $11.4.
Average cashier salary: $8.86 an hour.
How long a crew member would have to work to make CEO annual pay: 1.3 million hours or 619 years.
4. WALMART
CEO Michael Duke's total compensation: $18.1 million.
Average sales associate salary: $8.84 an hour.
How long a crew member would have to work to make CEO annual pay: 2.1 million hours or 986 years.
3. WENDY'S
CEO Roland Smith's total compensation: $16.5 million.
Average crew member salary: $7.66 an hour.
How long a crew member would have to work to make CEO annual pay: 2.2 million hours or 1038 years.
2. TARGET
CEO Gregg Steinhafel's total compensation: $19.7 million..
Sales floor team member: $8.29.
How long a crew member would have to work to make CEO annual pay: 2.4 million hours or 1,143 years.
1. YUM! BRANDS
CEO David Novak's total compensation: $20.4 million.
Average KFC / Pizza Hut / Taco Bell crew member: $7.50.
How long a crew member would have to work to make CEO annual pay: 2.7 million hours or 1,308 years.
This is also telling in the fact that I know John Schnatter makes much more than just his CEO package as the man is worth hundreds of millions of dollars and NO WAY do you accumulate that much wealth on a two million dollar salary. If each of the people gave back one million dollars to their employees, their individual salaries could rise at least ten thousand a year. But none of these greedy fuckwads are inclined to do that any time soon, thus the need for an immediate huge increase in the minimum wage, with certain exceptions made for age and company size. If the middle class disappears, as it is, this country will be a third world nation, a fact that we are rapidly approaching.
Right to work laws keep salaries low as CEO pay skyrockets. The 1% did all right for themselves these last few years while the middle class has gotten hammered. A look at the Hostess debacle is a good example. In 2005, after years of profit, suddenly they were "broke" and asked the workers to take a pay cut, which they did lowering their salary from an average of $48,000 to $38,000. Then they said the pension program was going to be halted "temporally" while they restructured it. What they actually did was steal all the money from it, a perfectly legal action. Then when the company went under, they said the fund was gone, mostly to pay for lavish pay raises which they gave themselves while everyone else was told to make do with less. These are facts, not opinion.
The Bain Capital style of business takeovers is a horrific, Dickensian model where the worker matters zilch in the long run and even the company itself is disposable. All that matters is getting a much money out of it and then leaving the dried husk on the side of the road. Three out of four businesses fail using this model, a terrible statistic and one in which salaries for the little guy are continuing to plunge.
The media is telling us none of any of this. The government is telling us none of this. The corporations are lying through their teeth about this. We are facing dark days ahead and voting idiots into office, especially anyone in the GOP, is a vote to destroy your life and that of your children. So go ahead and keep voting for fools who couldn't care less whether you live or die. Sooner or later, you will be in that long unemployment line, with no benefits past 26 weeks, no health insurance and a foreclosure staring you in the face, and wonder how it all went so wrong. Take a long look in the mirror because chances are, dick, you helped.
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